An Integrated Approach to Promoting An Interest in Marine Technology in British Columbia

摘要

The Department of Mechanical Engineering Technology at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) is developing an initiative to promote an interest in marine technology. The initiative involves students at three distinct levels: British Columbia high-school students, BCIT Technology Diploma students and BCIT Engineering Degree students. The high-school level of the project, the BCIT Underwater Discover Challenge, brings together high school students from around British Columbia to attend a two-day workshop to design, build and test an underwater ROV. This year on February 18th 30 students from five schools from across British Columbia attended the design and build workshop. By the end of that day all five school groups left with a nearly completed ROV that could be used to perform an underwater task. Over the next two weeks the students finalized their ROVs and, on March 3 at the BCIT Marine Campus, the students tested their designs and found out how challenging it is to successfully complete the underwater mission assigned to them. These students are encouraged to take the ROV they built to the regional MATE ROV competition [1] and this year one of the ROVs designed and built at the Underwater Discovery Challenge came in 3rd place at the MATE regional competition. The Technology Diploma level of the project involves one or more groups of students completing their diploma of Mechanical Engineering Technology at BCIT. Interested students work on the design and building of an Explorer class ROV for the MATE International ROV competition.